"So I could have, if I wore boots and skirts like hers," retorts Miss Ethel sullenly. "Then I'd strongly advise you, my dear, to get the address of her milliner and bootmaker at once." CHAPTER III. "I say, Pauline, is that Miss Rossitor going in at No. 3? It's just like what I remember of her dear old-maidish figure. I know she was expected home this month." "Poor old Rossitor!" laughs Pauline. "Do you remember, Addie, the long mornings she used to spend trying to make Bob and you understand the difference between latitude and longitude?" "I remember," answers Addie, with a sigh, "that she was wonderfully patient and painstaking with us, and I wish now with all my heart that I had profited more by her teaching. Pauline, I think I'll just run in and see if it is she. You and Lottie can return and let auntie know where I am." Miss Rossitor, a neat bright-eyed little woman of thirty-five, daughter of a deceased clergyman, had, some three years before, undertaken the education of Colonel Lefroy's neglected children, spending three or four hours every morning in their dilapidated school-room. She had become much attached to her unruly pupils, and it was with sincere regret that she had to give them up and go abroad as resident governess in a French family, being very poor herself, and finding it impossible to get her quarterly applications for salary attended to by the gallant but ever-absent colonel. "You old dear!" cries Addie, kissing the little lady vehemently. "It is you, really! I'm so glad to see you again! When did you arrive? How did you manage to get leave?" "I arrived last night; mother did not expect me for another week. I managed to get leave, because, most fortunately--I mean unfortunately--well, well"--with a beaming smile--"we won't try to qualify the circumstance--at any rate, one of my pupils had a bad attack of rheumatic fever, and was ordered to some German baths for a couple of months, and, as the family have accompanied her, I got leave for the time being. Now let me have a look at you, my dear Addie. Well, to be sure, what an immense girl you have grown! But your face has not changed much. And all the others--the boys--I suppose they have shot up too? Three years do make a difference, do they not?" "Rather!" cries poor Addie, lugubriously plunging at once into the subject of her woes. "It has made an immense difference to us. Oh, Miss Rossitor, you left us three years ago the happiest, the most contented and united family under the sun--you return, to find us the most miserable, destitute outcasts in England! Oh, oh!" "There, there, child; don't give way so, don't, dear! Tell me all your troubles, Addie; it may lighten them for you. I don't know anything about you clearly: mother has not had time to tell me yet; we've had visitors all the morning."